Project Road Bike

Offlate, I have been a bit of a bum:) And I need to break out of my lethargy. I have this strong sense of urge to do something physical. Maybe the motorcycle riding is inspiring me to take on things I have long forgotten. I used to be a junky with all things "greasy". From opening up a timepiece and assembling it back (before it all came apart;)) to servicing a bike, I havent done much physical recently. The industry I work in has made me extremely lazy and "soft". 

So, I'm embarking on a couple of projects. I have a road bike frame - bought from my neighbor. I'm gonna make it a ridable bike. This should be fun and hardy. My first book on building a road bike is on its way from Amazon. Second project - put together a home theater system on a budget.

Both of these should be fun. Lets see how much progress I make.

Jürgen Klinsmann as Chelsea Coach!

News of the day :

Roman sells Chelsea FC to a group of investors from Africa. The new owners collectively appoint Jurgen Klinsmann as the new manager/coach of Chelsea. And they bring back Jose Mourinho as part owner and to help Chelsea build a farm system. Didier Drogba, Eissien and the rest of the blue collar workmen of Chelsea FC get a contract renewal. John Terry is sidelined from the team for striking a defiant Grant-mi-coach sob posture. New captain is Petr Cech. Kaka signs with Chelsea FC for an undisclosed sum.

Oh, well, atleast I can dream:) Why is this dream of mine so novel? Its not really.

Think about this: There are atleast 20-30 great African players in the EPL. They all make close to 10 million pounds a year. I would form an African players in EPL union, put in some seed money together, raise the rest through investors and buy out a EPL club. Just for the fun of it. In that case, why not Chelsea :)

Klinsmann is my idol from yesteryears. I fell in love with West German football watching Voeller, Klinsmann, Beckenbauer(coach), Matthaus, Brehme etc.  West Germany won the 1990 WC. That was close to the golden age of W. German sports. Becker was still in his prime, Steffi Graf ruled women's tennis. And I was glued to a new/small/color TV :)

Klinsmann came back to coach Germany in 2006. The team didnt make it into the finals, but they played spiritedly. Now, if he can coach Chelsea, that would be awesome (Spurs - please dont hire him yet!)

Jose Mourinho - Leads a revolt in Chelsea whereby Eissien, Drogba and other senior Africanos come together and buy Chelsea FC :) Why not. Ownership & stock rewards in football is not bad. Dont pay anyone 20 million pounds, pay them in stocks. Incentives are all stock based. Now, that is a motivation for players to play their butt off. If they dont play well  and sell the club, they cant make a living. If they do, the windfall is huge... To make such a change, you need someone gutsy and out of the box - Hence Jose. To keep him busy with football activities and not ruin it for Jurgen, make sure he is building for the future.

John T - U suck. Jose made u who u are. Not Roman. So, get off the Grant bus and protest some:) Chelsea deserves a better coach and a better owner! Look at ManU - the coach hasnt changed his shirt in 12 years. And Arsenal - Wenger all the way.

For now, I'm shifting focus onto Arsenal - my second team in EPL. No Henry - no problems. We will let loose a bunch of kids and score more than u can ever count:)

Enough of my dreaming:) Its Sunday and no EPL this weekend. Hence, I'm entitled my blabbering!

Damn Chelsea and Damn Roman

The special one (Jose Mourinho) finally left his citadel @ Chelsea. Long time coming, one would say. Its a sad day for Chelsea fans and Chelsea FC. Whatever maybe his flaws, he is one of the most enigmatic personalities in football. The drama that surrounds him will move on with him, which will expose Chelsea even more. Now, the media will have more personalities to go after @ Chelsea to collect their pay dirt. A rich billionaire managing a football team? Or meddling with it so much that no coach worth his salt will want to be in that dummy role for long.  Management 101 - If the guy who pays for your bread "coaches" u directly, an intermediate coach's words can and will be second to the owner! 

It will be interesting to see if Board room tactics (read Oligarchical tactics) would cut it in a highly competitive professional sport. I guess as a player, you could be held accountable for performance (think more charts and pies in the coaching room about  individual performance and team performance, rather than tactics and positional plays), which would mean personnel mayhem. Who suffers, the little guys who work their butt of without scoring... Basically, those immeasurable things like attitude, commitment on the field, the little things that make a team successful will be lost.

Mass bikers

Interesting Set of Links : 

London - Bikers paradise (for a day!)

New Bike routes in London

Flash Mob - A commentary

FlashMob:
Pillow fights, zombies eating human brain, silent raving, flashmob flash photos, and many more... Where does it all end? Or does it? A couple of cool business models have emerged. And marketeers have picked up a few new ways to get you. Are there any negative impacts of this? Plenty, I would think. But, its still fascinating to see complete strangers coordinate and have some fun. How starved are we?:)

I'm waiting for this to be used effectively or obstructively on the next political campaign. Or for that matter, on our current prez... a little bit of fun wont hurt, would it?

What would Bush do if he were to be confronted by 4000 strange zombies? plus one, I say! What would Hillary do, if 4000 Bill Clinton's show up on her campaign trail one day?

A brief history of flash mob in Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob
Very interesting...

Silent Raving in London:
IMO, this one is the best so far: "Silent Rave" Revelling... I would have gone:) This one would qualify as "modern art" and a video of this should be in SFMoma!


Internet Bargain hunting? - China:
This one, you got to take your hats off to Chinese(asian?) ingenuity in finding a deal... Russell Peter - are u watching? Ur jokes might need to be reworked a bit...

Teambuying is indeed a very creative... Walmart, welcome to china

Zombies in SF:

Guardian

Maybe its the British influence in India that I developed a bias towards English newspapers and magazines. But, you cannot question the quality of Guardian, BBC & Economist.

Guardian is balanced, mostly, and covers a broad range of topics that interest me. Economist covers my business interests well. BBC gives me the international depth... Now, local news is something I turn to the Net.

Some interesting reads from the Guardian..
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/05/happy_birthday_helvetica.html

Chelsea - Double title

2 out of 4 titles wont be bad for most sports organization in any country, any sport.

FA Cup and Carling Cup winners, Chelsea - was just amazingly resilient. Just doing enough to win both these titles. Runner up in EPL and semi-finalist in Champions League is not all that bad either.

What attracted me to Chelsea about a couple of seasons ago was its character. I hated ManU until then, and didnt really care who played against them, I would support the other team. Along comes Chelsea and Roman. Beats ManU in its own game (spend a lot of money and build a winning organization). Now, Chelsea is worth about 3 times as much as it was worth before the Roman era. Business success. 2 EPL titles, 1 Carling cup, 1 FA cup... U name it, they have it... Champions league will come in due course, undoubtedly.

Mourinho is a genius, say what u may about his unconventional, almost irrational bragging. The chosen one, has done not many things wrong... Winning should absolve him from some stupid mind games.

Players I love: Terry, Eissien, Drogba, Lampard, Cech, Carvalho, Ballack, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Roben, Makhele... With so many amazing players, its not a wonder they win or atleast lose less:) Now, add one or 2 decent strikers and the goals will pour in...

Go Mourinho... Go Roman... Go Chelsea!

Apple TV & Airport Wireless Basestation

Wow! Very sweet piece of hardware.

Apple TV is the best investment I have made in home-theater. It took about 5 minutes to install, once I got hold of the right monstor cable for my TV. It connected with the Airport Base in a jiffy... And connected to my iTunes running on G4 in a second. I had all my music downloaded smoothly.

I'm yet to see another well packaged, well delivered, well designed hardware! Period. If u think iPod is cool, Apple TV converts ur plain old TV to a the Wifi dream home theater... I love it!

Now, I need multi-box support for my iTunes. That is, iTunes sync between different boxes on their own, so I use my laptop to buy a song and it syncs with my home computer, which syncs with my iPod and iTV. And why cant my iTV take a feed from my TV and record it? Why do I need a TiVO?

And my iPhone can sync addresses, appointments, emails, photos, songs... bye, bye iPod.

And why do I need to buy 2 separate devices? I'm talking about BaseStation and Apple TV. Rack it please... And ofcourse, add a few more things on top of this please. I should be able to hook up my video cam to Apple TV, playback my video on to this, edit the video and save it on to iTV. Which sends it back to my desktop, and I can cut my DVD. Not very far fetched, is that now?

Now, where is my Google free no-bandwidth-limits wireless?

Chelsea fan?

You got to see this if you are a Chelsea FC fan:)

I love English Football (yes, it is THE football). And I love Chelsea, Jose Mourinho, Didier Drogba, Ballack, Terry, Eissien ...

And still I found the Chelsea soap opera this season quite amusing... This Chelsea art gallery is quite funny!

Art Gallery (Guardian)

Oh, btw, Chelsea just won the Carling Cup today! Beating Arsenal 2-1. My second team:) Its so wonderful to not see ManU or Liverpool anywhere in sight! Sweet!

ManU - U got to hate them... they have too much money, and too much talent that they blatantly buy... Yes, Chelsea did the same recently, but it was ManU for years that set the pace in buying players and now, no ManU fan can accept somone kicking their bottom in their own game. Grow up!

Liverpool - I just started not liking them after the Dallas Stars owner (Hicks) co-bought this team. How can u not hate the Dallas Stars (and other franchises that the owner of Stars owns) when you are a San Jose Sharks fan?

Revontulet - the trip that never happened!

Cant wait for the clock to tick and get to middle of Feb. A trip to Finland, during winter, doesnt sound like much fun. With all the layerings of clothing needed to stay warm, it certainly wont be fun packing(shopping) for this trip. But, the mystic of the Borealis and concept of "Finnish Sauna" on a daily basis definitely would change one's outlook about the weather.

If u had asked me which Scan. country I would visit first, Finlandia wouldnt have been answer... sweden would have been my answer. But, then again, its caz I have met more Swedes than Finns... Now, thats about to change.